The Water Underground

In 2006, Kate Zidar of the Lower East Side Ecology Center asked CUP to help her produce educational materials about Combined Sewer Overflow or CSOs, a phenomenon common to cities with wastewater systems that share conduit with storm-water drainage systems. When it rains, the storm drains overload the city’s water treatment plants, spilling toxins into the river. Working with students from City-As-School, we explored the city’s unique water infrastructure, from water filtration plants in the Bronx, to the dig-sites of the city’s third water tunnel, to the toxins in our own rivers, oceans, and backwaters.

The investigation produced a thirty-minute documentary that features interviews with treatment plant engineers, tunnel diggers, tap-water testers and environmental justice activists from Harlem and Greenpoint. The video also features a claymation history of western toilets and sanitation systems, a series of paranoid skits, and a scatalogical repurposing of the 2006 summer jam “Riding Dirty.&#8221. The class also produced a prototype model of New York's Sewer system and the phenomenon of Combined Sewer Overflow. The prototype was elaborated by CUP and is now a fleet of “Sewer in a Suitcase” kits to be used by environmental education groups throughout New York State.